EOF

This is a discussion on EOF within the C Programming forums, part of the General Programming Boards category; What is EOF. How is it generated? Which key corresponds to "end of file" on the keybord??...

Do you realize what an enormous waste of manpower that is? Do the math... you post to 5 forums, on each forum *several hundred* people will spend time on your question... Lets assume, for easy numbers, that 100 people on each forum each spent 3 minutes... that, alone adds up to 1500 minutes or ... 25 manhours... just to look at your question and decide an answer. Now if the conversation evolves into some back and forth... even with 2 replies you have a full work-week of manhours *wasted* on something you could very easily have spent less than a minute looking up in your Compiler's Documentation.

> *sigh* Another shotgun poster. How many forums did you post this to, Mr. juice?Repeat offender no less
You ban them from daniweb, and I'll ban them from here - that at least should solve the annoyance in a couple of places.

> *sigh* Another shotgun poster. How many forums did you post this to, Mr. juice?Repeat offender no less
You ban them from daniweb, and I'll ban them from here - that at least should solve the annoyance in a couple of places.

Originally Posted by Prelude

I'm sorely tempted to take you up on that.

I know the weight of convention is too much to challenge here and at this point in internet history, but this always seems like a really ridiculous, counter-intuitive, counter-productive rule. The kind of rule that only people who really enjoy enforcing rules would consider worthwhile. Honestly (but no offense, lol).

Most of what I do (on this forum) is answer questions, but I have no issue at all if someone goes and gets the same (or some other) answer from someone else somewhere else. Why should they not be free to do so? In fact, I'd encourage them to. When I was in school, using multiple sources* in research was considered prerequirsite -- not bad manners. If answering questions is such a drag that you start to present yourself as some kind of martyr, maybe you shouldn't do it at all.

If you answer the same question repeatedly in different places, that is your choice, and if you regret it, it is absurd to blame the questioner.

If someone else answers the same question you answered here somewhere else, why would you care? By this logic, we should crack down on people who just read the OP and then provide the same answer someone else did already (hi, iMalc) in the same thread. Which is why I said this is counter-intuitive.

Anyway, I'm aware no change is possible on this front, for now, but still have to dissent. Hopefully one day in the future I'll be hailed as a visionary and liberator

I decided to start a GD thread about this, so if anyone is in the mood to chastise and explain why I am wrong, you can take it there:

* the objection that those sources need not all be forums (or worse, that "only one of them should be a forum") is absurd, so spare it. If I post a question, then find an answer online or in a book or on IRC or on the phone or via email or my gigantic brain, what's the difference? You have still "wasted your time" giving me an answer I already have. But maybe (just maybe) the more the merrier.

But if EVERY poster cross-posted all over the place, and YOU knew that every poster cross-posted all over the place, what exactly would be your motivation for answering?
Knowing full well that whatever you said would almost certainly have been said elsewhere.

It's like some kind of arms race. One muppet cross-posts and gets quicker answers. But it's a short term gain for one person. If everybody does it, then pretty soon, all the regular helpers just get ........ed off from repeatedly wasting their time - the end result being NO threads anywhere getting answered (at least not with any reliability - save for a few random driveby keen-to-impress but no staying power types).

But if you like answering the same question, feel free to sign up to multiple forums, and copy/paste your answer when you see the same question cross-posted. I'm pretty sure you'll get bored of it.

> If someone else answers the same question you answered here somewhere else, why would you care?
Our time is finite. If the same answer is given twice, then what about the question that doesn't get answered at all?
Now imagine you're in the position of having an unanswered question, because the people who could have answered it were distracted by some selfish twat who cross-posted and got the question answered multiple times.

But if EVERY poster cross-posted all over the place, and YOU knew that every poster cross-posted all over the place, what exactly would be your motivation for answering?
Knowing full well that whatever you said would almost certainly have been said elsewhere.

Or worse... contradicted elsewhere. Sadly people have a very strong tendency to believe what they hear first, accepting it as inassailable fact.

Think about what you're suggesting.... If everyone posts everywhere... then 100 forums become merely 100 copies of the same forum. The concept sounds wonderful until you realize the impact it has on the very diversity of information you seek...

I will however side up with you on the idea that if someone doesn't get the answer they want here (as happened today) there should be no penalty to moving on to a new forum to try again...

It's silly to care if they post somewhere else. If you have the time to read five other forums, why do you care if you say "It's CTRL-*" on all of them? No one is forcing you to read all of those other forums. It's not like you actually reply to every single thread anyway. It's not like you can't see the title that says "EOF" or "what's EOF" on all those places and go "oh that's that dude, I already answered him, I'll ignore this post".

By the same "logic", you should be mad that there is more than one explanation of pointers on the internet. "You wasted my time by writing a tutorial!" You should be mad that we've already answered the EOF question on this forum before. We should all start just replying "SEARCH, I'M NOT ANSWERING THAT AGAIN!" -- Hell, I know I've answered an EOF question here before. I shouldn't ever have to answer it again! YOU LOOK IT UP, it's on the internet already! Why are you even asking this question anywhere! Go buy a BOOK! Why even have a forum?

It's stupid to care if they cross post on different forums. "But they're wasting my time!" Don't read it then. You aren't getting paid by the post you read, even if you were, that would just mean you earned more money. It's not like they are cleverly disguising the same post to trick you into reading it. I can see if they are posting in every thread on this forum, but what the hell do I care if they post somewhere else? I don't.